"The reason when they try to wheen themselves off oil and it fails (Note
the 2008 Iranian Elections), is because the government wants to keep
their money juggernaut at the expense of the people."
actually it's more nuanced then that.
most of the civil services and subsidies provided by the governements are funded by oil money. note the huge protests in iran when they wanted to raise the gas prices there (which where cheaper then the US and WAY cheaper then europe's).
"I never knew Diesel was made from Algae, thats quite interesting and I thank you for sharing that!'
and those algea are so cool.
it you can tweak the algea, or use natural selction, to have them store large amounts of fatty acids in their vacuoles. which, when the batch has reaches a sufficient cell concentration, you can extract and turn into biodiesel the same way you would do with, say, used kitchen oil.
these algea provide a huge economical opening for countires that have a large populationa and live in climates temperate climates.
since you can use waste water to feed the algea.
"I would like to point out Switzerland when you say isolationism won't work,"
the irony here is that switzerland ISN'T as isolationist as you might think.
they enjoy huge benefits from the surrounding eu (the schengen treaty for one) and the ONLY reason they will not join the EU is because they will be forced to give up their main economic means, "personal banking". since the eu requires memeber states to be transparent about their banks financial transactions....something all those "legal" transactions in switzerland's closed bankworld won't be able to handle.
don't get me wrong. this it's probably best for the swiss to not join the EU, they are a relatively small european country with little natural resources. hence they get into banking...and have much more flexable regulations regarding certain types of research and businesses...like GM (genetic modification) which the rest of the EU is so paranoid about.
" I was trying to say we should stop policing the world and worry about mainly ourselves."
yes, i understood that. only the fools in the very right would be stupid enouhg to think that they cna retaurn america to it's 1910s diplomacy.
the problem here is that it's impossible to "think mainly about ourselves" since america is STILL the largest consumer of energy and goods. practically causing ANY change on the US to effect the rest of the world, and vice versa. however i will agree with you when you say; "solve our problems first, then take on the bigger picture."
you can't increase gass prices if not everyone has the money to pay em, or the alternatives.
"The federal government still has control over the states, and can
interfere when the states run into a problem they just can't handle,
but other than that, they can not interfere with state issues"
yes, but what I unfortunately foresee there ( in slight fear) is states that adopt VERY different regulations on very large topics.
like death pentaly, education (creationism/ID in schools) or hell...maybe even mandatory prayer in soem states (if schools use some sort of or "student referendum" to get around the constitution.), differences in drug tolerance (like medicinal marijuana in Califorina that can get you years in prison somewhere else), ect.
